Enthusiasts who plan to upgrade to Intel’s upcoming 13th Gen Core “Raptor Lake-S” desktop CPUs and 700 Series motherboards may have little choice but to pair them with DDR5 memory, according to an exclusive report from TechPowerUp, which claims that Intel is trying to fuel the adoption of DDR5 by telling manufacturers to avoid releasing 700 Series motherboards with DDR4 support.
This isn’t the worst news for Intel users who wish to stick with last-generation memory, as 13th Gen Core processors will function on 600 Series motherboards, many of which have DDR4 support, but enthusiasts who are planning to make the jump to the latest and greatest chipset may want to prepare themselves accordingly for DDR5’s annoyances, such as relative scarcity and higher price premiums.
It remains to be seen how successful Intel’s push for DDR5 memory will be, but it seems safe to speculate that there will still be many 700 Series motherboards that do retain support for DDR4. The first Raptor Lake-S chips are due later this year.
Intel wants 700-Series Chipset Motherboards without DDR4 (TechPowerUp)
- Intel is apparently already asking motherboard makers to avoid using DDR4 in combination with the upcoming 700-series chipsets and the only reason for this would be to speed up the transition to DDR5.
- What this doesn’t mean, is that Intel has removed support for DDR4 in the CPUs, as it’s still very much present and is expected to work fine in 600-series chipset motherboards.
- We can sort of understand Intel’s sentiment here, but we’re also expecting to see some motherboards based on the 700-series chipsets with DDR4 support, least not from the likes of ASRock that has always liked to create non-conforming motherboards.